


Flowerboy

by testifytime



Series: Hanahaki [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Minor John Egbert/Roxy Lalonde, Minor John Egbert/Vriska Serket, Multi, very light in relation to flower description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/testifytime/pseuds/testifytime
Summary: For as long as you can remember, there have always been flowers.You are a rare case, a doctor tells you when you are six. You have flowers built into your system, flower buds embedded deep in your lungs. It’s not an abnormal thing, he says, not in parts; the flowers that bloom through your skin are one disease - the pains inflicted upon your soulmate showing through your own flesh - and the petals that peal through your lungs in rough coughs are another - every petal a show of your unrequited love. But it is abnormal when both occur at once.Abnormal, he says, and worrying.They might kill you.





	Flowerboy

**Author's Note:**

> Reading fics with flower-based diseases got me thinking - what'd happen if you had them at once? Of course I only ended up remembering two: one where flowers bloom through your skin when your soulmate is hurt, and one where you cough up petals whenever you feel unrequited love. It's still an interesting combination.

For as long as you can remember, there have always been flowers.

You are a rare case, a doctor tells you when you are six. You have flowers built into your system, flower buds embedded deep in your lungs. It’s not an abnormal thing, he says, not in parts; the flowers that bloom through your skin are one disease, and the petals that peal through your lungs in rough coughs are another. But it is abnormal when both occur at once.

Abnormal, he says, and worrying.

You are not supposed to have the flowers at your age. They should occur when you are at least ten, not six, and they should not be so deep within your core. They should not bloom as often as they do, they should not be such a deep colour as they are - something that indicates, of course, that the flowers have been blooming for years, not the weeks that your father had first assumed - they should not make your father’s crow’s feet turn to worry lines, they should not make the doctors mumble under their breath and shake their heads, they should not make the pretty nurses stare at you with sad, pitying eyes when they think you’re not looking.

There’s a lot of things that they shouldn’t be.

But they are.

 

The flowers that bloom through your skin never hurt, though they always look like they should. They appear on your knees in bursts of red, they push through your back in lines of white, they drip down your lips in trudges of green - a scraped knee, a scar, a sickness that takes weeks to overcome - but no blood or bile ever follows them, and even when you trace the line on your back, arm bent as far as it can reach just so the tippiest top of your fingertips can brush against the soft flesh, you can’t feel a scar where you know one should be.

It scared you, at first, when you were three and you burst into tears as red trailed down your leg. The salvia were too bright to be blood, and you realised that quickly, when there was no pain to follow the bright splash of colour. You had even smiled at them, and laughed, that giddy little laugh that snorted in your nose, even then, and had come to love the purples and reds and whites that sprung up on your body from time to time.

You had smiled at them less once the doctor told you what they meant.

 

It hurts to know, sometimes, that your soulmate is in pain.

Now that you are twelve, and you know that the salvia only appear when their body is marked, you realise just how often the flowers appear. Often they burst through your skin in quick succession; cuts surrounded by bruises on their legs, knees, arms, cheek, drawing red and purple flowers from your flesh with soft little rips. The flowers don’t stay long, appearing for a few minutes at most, but the tingling of wounds being opened and left to heal linger for as long, you assume, as your soulmate feels the pain of them.

You wonder what they could be doing. What do they do that makes your skin bloom with flowers so often? They’re hard to hide, sometimes, and it makes you question just how good they are at hiding the cuts and the bruises and the scars. Maybe they don’t, because they’re just very clumsy?

You don’t think that’s right. You like to think it is, though, because everything else sounds too harsh or scary, and you’re only twelve, and you don’t want to think about things that you can’t stop from happening, or that you can’t help make better.

You start to pick them from your flesh. Turn them into bunches and bundle them to press into a book you want to show your soulmate when you find them. It’s your way of showing you felt their pain, all of it, and you cared, and you wish you could have done more.

Your doctors tell you not to do it, because it’s delicate, picking the stems straight from your flesh, but you don’t care. You’ve stopped listening to what the doctors say. You’re twelve, after all; you know a bit more than them when it comes to the flowers in your skin. They still don’t know how you can cough petals and have blossoms on your arms each day.

Neither do you.

You still pick the flowers when they bloom.

 

The petals that you hack from your lungs in huge, heaping bursts of breath are few and far between when you are six. The doctors don’t understand this; this is a sickness made from an unrequited crush, they say, but you’re too young to know what a crush is, and you haven’t found a pretty young girl to take your slim, six year old interest. The petals don’t come often enough, either, just one red poppy petal, maybe once a week, often just once a month.

You don’t understand why, and they never tell you.

You understand when you’re a little bit older, and you first meet Vriska.

 

You are thirteen when you meet her, and she is not a very nice girl.

She likes to bully the people around her, to steal their hopes when she can’t steal their possessions, and she is quick to punch when her words alone don’t work. She likes you, you think, enough that she never hits you unless you’re being very, very slow, and even then it’s less of a hit, and more of a playful punch.

You learn that she has an abusive mother, and that she takes everything she learns from her, and does it to everyone else.

You think yourself lucky that she likes you enough to just laugh and punch the meat of your arm when you say something stupid. Not that you think you say stupid things, but they’re stupid to her, because she is smarter than everyone you know - everyone but Rose - and sometimes the things you say are things she already knows, or two steps behind what she expects you to be.

You crush on her because she is loud and proud and angry and in control. She takes what she wants, and she gets it - every time. She is dangerous, and like a tornado, and for a long, long time, you don’t realise how bad that can be.

The petals you cough into your palm when you are alone, that tickle your throat and leave it burning when they finally tumble from your lips, are the same deep, encompassing blue as her eyes, her lips, her nails, her text, and you run your fingers over them every time, even past the point of your throat begging for something to soothe the pain.

Her flowers don’t last long.

The doctors tell you if it’s truly unrequited, if you truly love her, they should last for years, and grow, and grow, the roots in your lungs digging deeper until full flowers bloom. From her, two petals fell out at once at the most, and for a while, you were disappointed.

You went on one date with her, and you stopped feeling disappointed when your lips pressed together and you felt nothing at all.

What confused the doctors more than that, you think, are the poppy petals that tumbled out with the lupine from time to time.

 

After Vriska is Roxy.

You are sixteen when you meet her, and she is, you think, as opposite from Vriska as one can get.

Everything about her is pink. Her personality is pink - pink like bubblegum, pink like pastels, pink like those soft plush rabbits you see being sold every Valentine’s, the ones you always want to buy but never do, because poppy petals tumble from your lips, and you have to leave before anyone sees the red carefully cradled in your palms - and bubbles like the laughter on her lips, as exuberant as the scrunch of her eyes when she smiles bright white. She is kinder than Vriska, and softer than Vriska, and she treats you like someone who isn’t very stupid at all.

She’s also in love with your cousin.

The doctors are less worried, yet even more worried at the same time, when the rosepink force their way from your lungs in threes and fours. At least this time you are truly facing unrequited feelings. At least this time the pangs in your chest, over your heart, match the shudders of your body as petal after petal drop wetly into your palm, and choke in your throat when you make the mistake of breathing greedily in again too soon.

You smile the day Roxy tells you that she and Jane have finally brought themselves together, smile as wide as you can, and it’s genuine, because you love her, and you’re happy for her, happy for Jane, and they will make each other happy in ways you know you never, ever can.

You still dart away before they’re finished to find a safe place to expel your lungs of the petals that clog your throat, hack and retch them onto the floor with as much force as your chest can take before it aches, before you’re dry heaving over the wet mess of rosepink and poppy petals. You drive their worried looks from your mind, and you expel the tears from your eyes, too.

It doesn’t take long to lose your feelings for her after that. Seeing how happy she and Jane are together makes it easier to let go.

The poppy petals still tumble from your lips from time to time.

You’ve long since stopped worrying about them by the time the rosepink stop.

 

Between the flowers that bloom from your skin and the petals that slip from your lips, you find, by the time you’re seventeen, that you’ve filled books upon books with flowers. There’s tens of them, all filled with salvias and lupines and rosepinks and poppies, all carefully pressed and preserved like a timeline of your diseases. That’s a morbid way of thinking about it, you guess, but it’s true; they follow your heartache and heartbreak, and that’s what your diseases are ruled by.

You run your fingers over the poppies on quiet nights, when your dad is in bed and your mind is too busy to think. You bundle them up with the salvias, and you’re not sure why, really, but you suppose deep down perhaps you know that the flowers that bloom from your legs are the same as the petals that breeze from your chest. Feelings and flowers towards the same person - but who?

You’ve never been able to figure it out. Not once have you connected the poppies to a person you know, and not once have the doctors been able to decipher why they come when you’re not feeling heartache. It’s an enigma, they say, as much as the rest of you is, the odd flowerboy who broke every rule they thought existed with your flowers and your petals.

You wish they’d figure it out. Your dad’s eyes are losing the laugh lines around their edges, and between his brows, imperceptible to all but those who know his worn, welcoming face by heart, are the starts of worried creases. He’s scared, you think, because it’s been going on for too long, far too long, and neither the flowers or the petals will stop until you know who they belong to.

 

In the end, you figure it out before anyone else.

You meet him in person for the first time when you’re eighteen, a long drive to the airport made shorter by the constant messages you pass back and forth, your phone a sea of red and blue. He is there when you arrive, a bounce in your step and the breath gone from your lungs, because traffic had been bad, and you’d shown up at least half an hour later than what you’d expected, and he’d come in at least an hour sooner than planned.

He’s standing with his hands in his pockets and thick, black headphones over his head, pressed tight against his ears - soundproofing, you think, or maybe just so they don’t slip with the steady bob of his head - red and white shirt with the familiar broken disc in the centre of his chest, worn skinny jeans and faded red converse. He looks cool, and casual, and you know it’s him without having to send a single line of blue text to the red on your phone to confirm.

When you lunge at him, his hands shoot out from his pockets like he’d been expecting it, and he envelopes you in a hug that’s both comforting and loose; pressed tight against your sides yet freeing. He smells like apples and cinnamon, like steel, like doritos and sweat and too-thick body spray, and he’s warm, warmer than anyone before him, like lava or fire or a blanket fresh from the dryer. He has height on you - a good few inches or so - yet he’s so slender it’s worrying, like if you press too tight he’ll snap in half - but when he laughs at you for being a wimp with the hug, and goads you into something more _brolike_ , you find that he’s firm and solid and strong, and no part of him gives when you squeeze.

You pull back, and you can’t see his eyes, but something hitches in your throat. For a moment, everything stops, and the sounds around you fade, and it’s just you and him and an inability to move any further, to look anywhere but at your reflection in his shades.

Your throat hitches again, and again, and then you’re coughing, spluttering, hunching over and retching so loud, so hard, and he crouches beside you and grabs at your shoulders and with frantic coolness asks if you’re okay.

You try to respond, but you can’t, because petals are tumbling from your lips, and you don’t need to look at them to know that they’re poppies, the same colour as his text.

 

The more time you spend with him, the worse it gets.

You’re pleased to note, at first, that while the poppies are starting to fall like water from your lips, the salvias stop blooming on your skin. When he is breathing quietly on the floor beside your bed, tucked in safe by the thick duvet your dad had found to smother him in from some back closet or box in the basement, well loved yet warm, you wonder if maybe your soulmate is safe, now. Maybe they’re not so clumsy anymore, or maybe they’re better at making sure they save themselves before each clumsy fall. You wonder if they’ll mind the red poppies that clog up your lungs, and you pretend, for a moment, that they don’t, and that they’ll kiss you even as you choke on feelings you’ve only just confirmed to be true.  

It’s bullshit, of course, and you know it is. The salvias don’t bloom because he isn’t being hurt by his brother anymore, now that he’s in Washington with you. He would mind the petals, and it wouldn’t be in a kiss, because they wouldn’t be happening if he returned your feelings. That’s how it works, after all. That’s how you know you never stood a chance with Roxy, not really, and it’s how you know you’ll never stand a chance with him.

It’s oddly easy to imagine being with him, though. Even in the dark of your room, his face barely lit by the moonlight that streams in past the pulled curtains, it’s easy to imagine him closer, beside you, the scent of apple-cinnamon fanning gently across your face with each gentle breath. It’s easy to imagine what his skin may feel like under your fingertips, to trace each scar you know, intimately, the exact place of, to imagine how soft his hair might be against your palm as you draw his barely-awake form in for a kiss.

You think that maybe it should scare you. You’ve never considered being gay, after all, but you’ve never put much thought towards being straight, either, so maybe it really shouldn’t worry you at all. It doesn’t, either way, and that should confuse you but it doesn’t, and you guess that’s what it’s like to find your soulmate. To not be confused or scared, to just accept that it’s good, and that the thoughts are good, and leave it at that.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that.

He may be your soulmate, but he doesn’t know that. You’re not going to tell him, either, because he might think he _needs_ to be with you, then, or he might refuse you altogether, cut off your friendship because you broke the biggest rule of the bro code. It scares you either way, and in the night, as you watch his eyelids flutter with dreams, watch the way his lips puff as he breathes, you try to stay as quiet as possible as you pull petal after petal from the depths of your throat, even though pressing your fingers down so far makes you gag and choke.

You don’t need to look at them to know what the mess of wet and grey on your bed are.

 

You learn, a year later, that maybe your father’s worry lines are for good reason.

The doctors are cautious of your health. The flowers have stopped blooming from your skin, but all it means, they say, is that you’ve met your soulmate - which you knew, the moment you saw him you knew, so that is not a surprise at all. The roots of the flowers, the stems, the buds, have not left your system. They’re there, under the surface, growing bigger, deeper, burrowing, and they’re agitating the flowers in your lungs.

You could have told them that.

You spend most of your time retching petal after petal after petal, and when not those, whatever you might have eaten or drunk that day. The rough heaves leave your stomach tender and aching, leave your throat burning with acidic bile, and through the ache in your chest you can’t tell what really hurts more. The coughing has become so violent, small, dark red flecks dot the poppies and the liquid that fly past your lips, and has become so frequent that it empties your belly before you can fully digest anything you consume.

It worries your dad, who’s starting to see the hollow in your cheeks, the shake in your fingers and arms, and it worries the doctors, who’re starting to see the first full buds bloom in your lungs, the petals that emerge half stuck together, like you’d brought them up before they could fully form.

It starts to get harder to hide. You think Rose already knows, but she’s perplexed, because she’s seen the same signs the doctors had when you were six, and she can’t feasibly put them together, because by all means, you shouldn’t have both diseases at once. It means, at least, that she can’t fully form a theory, because her books contradict what she sees, so you’re still able to slip away and cough petals and bile and blood until it hurts to breathe.

For now, at least, it works, because eventually, it will get worse.

You try not to think about that.

 

You think, perhaps, it’s ironic that Jade finds out first.

She bursts into your room one day when you’re not prepared for guests - a normal day, a usual day for you to expel yourself of the things that clog your lungs like swamp water and make it so, so hard to breathe - and catches you in the act, with blood splattering your palms, petals slipping between your fingers, and bile drooling down your lips. She takes one look at the tears on your cheeks - something you’ve become numb to, now, because you’re used to the ache and the pain and the rot inside you, so the tears barely bother you anymore, not when there’s bile and blood and petals to worry about - and she’s on her knees, dirtying her skirt with bodily fluids and mushy, wilted poppies, and she cups your face and whispers softly as you sob and retch and empty yourself as quickly as you can.

Your tears feel hot with shame when you look at her jade green eyes and see they’re wet and crinkled with worry. You want to whimper something to her, anything, some sort of strong, frivolous phrase that will make her laugh her worries away, or at least flash a smile brave enough to make her relax. But you don’t. You retch again, on nothing, this time, and you listen to her sob as she holds you close and threads her fingers through your hair. They catch every now and then - not like his fingers would - but they work, and you relax, and you sob and sob into her chest as she sobs and sobs into the crown of your head.

Neither of you quite calm down, but she sniffles, and you gasp wetly, and it’s close as either of you will get.

She knows who the poppies belong to. She doesn’t ask, not once, and only confirms it with a hushed, “him..?” You think maybe your silence is answer enough, because she curls in on you, around you, and she smells like fresh fields and chemicals and soft, light fur, everywhere, like she thinks she can protect you from the roots and leaves and petals inside you.

She doesn’t say, “it’s okay,” because she knows it’s not. She just murmurs, “I’m here, I’m here”, sometimes hushed, sometimes firm, like a mantra, until her voice fades so quiet that all you can hear is the rush of air from her lips.

She doesn’t know, not all of it, but like Rose, she knows enough.

It’s comforting to think that.

 

You’re told by the doctors, when you’re twenty, that you’re dying.

It doesn’t shock you. You already knew.

The poppies - coming up, now, as fully formed flowers - are rotting before they leave your throat. They taste bitter where once they tasted fragrant and sweet, and they break apart on your tongue before you can scrape them out, leaving them a horrid brown mush that leaves your mouth tasting like dirt for days, no matter how much you brush.

It’s not hard to tell that something is wrong, and that you are suffering for it. The main theory, it seems, is that the diseases aren’t getting better, and are instead merging into something much, much worse. It’s not a case they’ve seen before, they say, so they’re not sure, and they don’t want to tell you just in case-

But a nurse takes pity on you, because she’s seen you there since you were a child, and she thinks you have a right to know, considering your hospital visits are becoming more and more frequent.

The roots will reach your heart, she says. They will form stems, and the stems will bud. When they bud, they will burst from your heart, and, the doctors think, you will die. It seems the only plausible way to go, considering they have been monitoring the way the roots and stems and buds progress along your system, and they seem to be drawing nearer towards the center of your body, towards your chest, where your so-far untouched heart aches in its own way.

You already knew, but it saddens you anyway. It makes you sob, heart wrenching and broken and all too loud, into the palm of your hand in your bed when you’re home, while Jade soothes your hair and pulls you close to her chest, quiet because what can she say? Nothing. Nothing that’s not lies and false hope and salt to the wounds you’ve been nursing since you were six.

You never thought you would die so young. It hurts.

It hurts more than the poppies.

It hurts less than knowing that he’ll never know why.

 

You think, maybe, you completely underestimated Rose.

She knew - you knew she knew, and you think she knew that you knew that she knew, because Rose is just like that, endless in her ways of knowing and her understandings of anything and everything, even the little things that don’t seem worth knowing or understanding - she knew it all from the very start, maybe sooner. Maybe she’d known it longer than you had, though that’s silly, because she didn’t know you, then, but you wouldn’t put it past her to have figured it out before you’d even met.

She never outright tells you that she knows. She never corners you, she never questions you, she never sends you paragraphs upon paragraphs of perfectly written and overly eloquent words expressing her worry, her fears, her disapproval of your not telling her from the very start. She never tells you a thing, but at the very least, you know that you have hurt her in your not telling. You have hurt her in the way that knowing your friend is going to die, but knowing he will never tell you, can only ever hurt a person; cutting deep, down to the core, like feeling a knife slip through your chest.

She never mentions anything to you, and she never gives you a look that betrays her knowing.

You only know she knows, and that she has sorted it all out, when you cough up a poppy and blood and bile into the kitchen sink, and feel Jade’s hands on your shoulders, shaky and light and tentative, like she’s not sure if touching you will make you fall apart, like she’s not sure if she even _should_ touch you. Which is weird, because Jade has been there for you since she first caught you with poppy petals slipping past your lips, and not once has she seemed so out of place or unsure, not even when you coughed up nothing but poppies and blood and cried into her chest as you babbled madly about dying and death and fears.

You smell apples and cinnamon when you quickly turn to press your face into her chest, and instead of the softness of her breasts, the steady rise and fall of her breaths accompanied by the gentle thumps of her heart, your forehead thunks against a firm, solid chest that hides a heartbeat like a bird in a cage, and expands-deflates so quickly you think it’s making you motion sick.

His hands are calloused yet soft, just as you’d imagined them, years ago in the dark of your own room, but they shake more than you ever remember them - or imagined them - to. Because he is never unsure. He is never unprepared. It’s just not who he is, and so it scares you, confuses you as he pulls you away from his chest with unstable, unsure hands, and you flinch, squeeze your eyes shut, because surely, surely this is what you have feared the entire time, isn’t it? The moment he sees the petals, and dots the lines to make the full picture, and the words of his disgusted refusal pierce your heart like the flowers you know are slowly, slowly budding inside your chest.

Except they don’t.

His thumbs slide across your cheeks as his fingers, rough on the pads yet soft in the creases, curl around your jaw, and slowly, tenderly, he wipes away the tears. You don’t dare open your eyes. You barely dare to breathe, keeping your breaths slow and shallow to hear his own soft broken gasps seethe into the air around you. You smell apples and cinnamon and salt, because the metal and sweat has faded from his skin, now, and he’s stopped using body spray to cover them up, and it’s on his hands, his skin, his breath as he leans in.

He keeps stroking your cheeks, slow, steady swipes across your cheekbones, long after the tears are gone, and all that’s left inside you is a tense apprehension. You’re waiting for the shoe to drop. For him to escape whatever trance he’s in, or realise that you’re okay, now, and he doesn’t need to dote on you, even though each inhale you take is wet and ragged and most definitely not-healthy. But his hands stay cupping your face, fingers splayed to cover as much of your jaws and cheeks as possible, hooking, just slightly, like a cage, like he’s trying to hold you in place.

You don’t know why, until you hear him hacking, and coughing, and spluttering like there’s something stuck in his throat.

Your eyes fly open just in time to see the sweetpea petal that tumbles from his lips.

Your watch it fall to the floor - just one petal, slightly rotten around the edges, perfectly whole besides those bits of brown that curl ever so slightly in on themselves - swaying and swooping to and fro on a microbreeze. You startle as it lands without a single sound, and suddenly, you remember the hands on your face, the firm warmth in front of you, the scent of cinnamon and apples.

You look at him, eyes wide, and he laughs, wet and tense and raspy. His shades are gone. For once, you can see his eyes, as bright and red as your poppies used to be before they started to decay, with tears lingering in the corners as he smiles, toothy and white. His fingers drag against your skin, and then apples and cinnamon are fanning against your face, and red eyes are lidding, just slightly, watching you with - nervousness? Excitement? A mix of both? You can’t tell, he’s too close, and you don’t care, because when you try to pull back, try to whimper away, like this is a dream and you’re waiting for your alarm to snap you awake, he tightens his hold and draws you back in, crowds you against the sink, and presses his body, warm and firm, sharp angles and no give under hesitant fingertips, against yours.

Your eyes squeeze shut just before his lips touch yours, and it’s euphoric. You surge up onto your tiptoes and slump back into the sink, because you’re not sure which way your body wants to go, but he seems to know, and he follows you, keeps your lips pressed together and, if anything, presses into it harder the moment he feels you push back into it.

You think, maybe, when he swipes his tongue across your bottom lip, and surges forward into it, flicks his tongue across the backs of your teeth and slides it against your own, that all he can taste are poppies and blood and bile and rot, but he doesn’t seem to care.

You don’t, either, because he tastes of cinnamon and apples and processed foods and sweet peas, and it’s so perfectly him it almost hurts.

You kiss him back, harder, and relish in his gasp against your lips.

 

When you go back to the doctors, you have him with you.

He holds your hand as you pensively wait for the results, silent beside you, radiating warmth and solid enough to support your weight when you eventually lean against him. You wouldn’t be able to see it, but you can _feel_ it, the tension running through him, forcing him still in a way he can’t shake off, as much as you think he’d like to. He’s not even drumming his fingers against his thigh anymore.

When the doctor comes in, her face is terse. She holds the papers in her hands. Her eyes flicker between you both, then to the papers, and you think maybe you can see something in her eyes that you don’t know, something promising, something good.

Her eyes land on you once they’ve swept through the last sheet, and she breaks into a wide smile that has you grinning before she’s even said the words.

You don’t think there’s ever been more relief in one room than when you’re both told your systems are clear of flowers.

 

For as long as you can remember, there have always been flowers.

When Dave was hurt, they would bloom up through your skin, red and white and purple salvias, and while they would never last on your flesh, you know exactly where each and every scar on his body is, how deep it was, how long the pain from it lasted from the tingles of your own skin.

When you were in unrequited love, flowers would slip from your lips. The lupines and the rosepinks have long since been forgotten, even pressed into those old books that are slowly gathering dust under your bed. The poppies, the same colour as his text, as his eyes, were the ones that came first, and the ones that lasted longest.

The doctors called you a strange case. They thought you would die by the age of twenty one; the flower boy with the flower diseases that never should have occurred together.

There are no more flowers, now. Even the books you kept hidden under your bed, filled with pressed poppies and salvias and lupines and rosepinks, have been long since disposed of.

You weren’t sad to see them go.

 

When you are twenty one, you flop down over the back of your sofa, onto the exposed form of your soulmate, your boyfriend, below. You ignore his weak groan, the vague protest of a hand pushing at your shoulder before they find more worthwhile things, and nip at his jaw, take in the smell of apples and cinnamon and musk.

You press yourself against Dave, press him down into the sofa as you situate yourself on top of him, and he chuckles at you, his hands on your hips as he rubs slow, steady circles into your hips with the pads of his thumbs, and you slide your lips up past his jaw, past his cheek, giggle as he tilts his head and makes an affronted noise when you dip out of the way to avoid his lips.

He snorts, and manages to capture you anyway.

When he pulls back, he looks at you, grins at you wide and toothy and white,

And you see flowers in his eyes.


End file.
